Fig. 6.

Identification for both pseudotime-dependent and disease-dependent regulators. a Workflow for identification of 11 key regulators. SCENIC analysis result in 337 regulons with significant differences between PJI and AL groups then were intersected with genes critical for fibroblast differentiation (1348 genes identified during pseudotime analysis), resulting in 45 transcription factors. We further removed 34 transcription regulators whose expression levels were not consistent among individuals with the same diagnosis. b SCENIC analysis result for the selected eleven regulons visualized with heatmap. c Heatmap shows the eleven transcription factor expression changes along pseudotime differentiation. Immunofluorescent assays display NPAS2 d SOX5 e expression in the AL and PJI groups, sections were labeled with anti-collagen III (green) which shows the distribution of collagen